Hey Kid! You're Looking Good!

Art!

For the full article, read here. Wish I could be there to see the whole lot.

The Right to Offend - The Guardian

I agree wholeheartedly with this article.

So now you know how I think.

View of Balik Pulau

This is a panorama from a series of pictures taken from the peak of Jalan Tun Sardon on the way to Balik Pulau. Taken on 15th June 2009, on the way to celebrate my birthday, with my wife, parents, babe, sam & lyndsey.

 

Lu-ver-ly, no?

Penang Guitar Festival

The Penang Guitar Festival was held on 29th August 2009. Details here.

Brian asked me to be the token bass player for this "guitar" festival thing, and after some hesitation, I agreed.

I gave a workshop on playing the bass by ear, at least that's what I think I blathered about during that one hour. Here's a picture of me during that workshop.



And I played two songs for the night concert. It was supposed to be 3 songs, but I had to cut one off because the whole concert was running over-time. Here's a photo from the performance.



Then the videos. Not really proud of them. I was nervous and my hands were cold. But they'll do:






There's hope at least that it brought me a few seconds of fame.

Pretty Women ....

Some time back I had a CD or cassette of Sondheim's music from Broadway. At that time I did not know who Sondheim was and where his music was played. But that record was really jazzy and mellow. Wonder where it is now, maybe Abe would know. But this one song always had my attention. On the plane from San Francisco to Hong Kong, I watched Sweeney Todd and then I found out how this song came to be.

Pretty Women
by Stephen Sondheim
from Sweeney Todd

Pretty women
Fascinating...
Sipping coffee,
Dancing... pretty women
Pretty women
Are a wonder.
Pretty women!

Sitting in the window or
Standing on the stair
Something in them cheers the air.

Pretty women
Silhouetted...
Stay within you,
Glancing... stay forever,
Breathing lightly...
Pretty women,
Pretty women!

Blowing out their candles or
Combing out their hair,
Even when they leave
They still are there.
They're there

Ah! Pretty women, at their mirrors,
In their gardens,
Letter-writing,
Flower-picking,
Weather-watching.
How they make a man sing!

Proof of heaven as you're living,
Pretty women! Yes, pretty women!
Here's to pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women,
Pretty women

[update]
I remember now. It is this CD.


Abe, what happened to it?
Anyone want to get it for me? Here. My birthday is 15th June.

X-rated Ad on FB

Saw this ad on Facebook today. It's in Malay, I'm guessing that's how it got past the censors. Too bad for you who do not understand.

darn these things .....

This oven/burner thing here is called ...... a "range". Who knows these things anyway?

This past Thursday I went to Ranch 99 to buy grocery stuff to do some cooking, bought chicken bones for soup, bought dumplings, bought 白菜 to cook.

I went back home, turned the oven on to pre-heat, and put a pot full of water to boil - yes that very pot in that picture. Then I go prepare the beef slices to put in the oven, crack some eggs to make an omelette (the stupid spell checker is suggesting that I spell it as omelet, who spells it like that? American people?), etc. I was happily doing that and suddenly I noticed that the oven/stove/burner thingy was dead. Lifeless. I panicked. Already cooked the rice.

What do I do? I grope around the oven/stove/burner thingy looking for a switch or anything, could not find any. Tak guna! It was late and I did not want to go out to look for food.

Anyway, what would we do with out the internet? I looked up burner thingys which go off in the middle of cooking. First response was to find the circuit breaker. Why didn't I think of that?

So I look at the circuit breaker, the switches were labeled. I looked for an oven/burner/thingy .... could not find it. To be fair, there was a pair of switches in the tripped position, which looking back, I should have reset.


So I go back to the internet, go to the GE page and look for product help, since that thing is was their product. What do I find? I see under cooking products, this oven/burner/stove thing is called a "free-standing range". Who thought of that.


Anyway, it all made sense after that, and I saw that the circuit breaker for the range was tripped. I reset it and it was ready to go. All that took an hour or more.

By then I had already kept my raw food in the fridge and eaten bread.

Anyway, I continued with the chicken soup. It was good.

Darn those ranges.

Most religious leaders are fools

'Most religious leaders are fools' says this dude. Can't blame him.